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A Tour of NTL: Obtaining and Installing NTL for Windows 
and other Platforms </title>
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<h1> 
<p align=center>
A Tour of NTL: Obtaining and Installing NTL for Windows 
and other Platforms
</p>
</h1>

<p> <hr> <p>

The WinNTL distribution of 
NTL can be used on any Windows platform.
Actually, there is nothing Windows-specific about WinNTL.
The source code is identical to the UNIX NTL distribution;
only the packaging is slightly different, and no assumptions
are made about the program development environment.
Thus, it should be possible to install WinNTL on
other operating systems 
with little difficulty.

<p>
<b>Mac OS Users:</b>
since Mac OS is essentially just a (rather funny) flavor of Unix,
you will be much better served using the 
<a href="tour-unix.html">Unix distribution</a>.

<p>
<b>Windows Users:</b>
you should consider using a Unix emulation environment like
<a href="https://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a>
or
<a href="http://www.mingw.org/">MinGW</a>, 
instead of 
Microsoft development tools.
<p>
Why?
<ul>
<li>
These environments use gcc, which generally adheres closer to language
standards and produces more efficient code that Microsoft's 
compiler.
<p><li>
With these environments, you can use NTL's 
<a href="tour-unix.html">Unix distribution</a>,
and the installation is almost entirely automatic:
no pointing and clicking -- not much more 
than <tt>./configure</tt> and <tt>make</tt>.
You can also easily to install GMP 
and run NTL's performance-tuning Wizard.
These factors combined can make a hige difference in performance, 
easily giving you a huge (10x or more) performance improvement.
<p><li>
On 64-bit machines, you should definitely consider Cygwin:
the 64-bit version of Cygwin gives you an 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing">LP64 data model</a>,
which for many reasons is preferable to the Windows data model.
In particular, you will get the most performance out of NTL
in this environment.
</ul>




<p>
The remaining instructions on this page only apply 
if you <i>do not</i> use a Unix emulation environment
like Cygwin or MinGW.

<p>
If you really want to get the most out of NTL, please stop, 
and seriously consider using a Unix emulation environment
and 
NTL's 
<a href="tour-unix.html">Unix distribution</a>.
Your code will be much snappier, and your quality of life 
will be much better.

<p>
You have been warned.

<p>
<b>
Obtaining and unpacking NTL.
</b>

<p>

To obtain the source code and documentation for NTL,
<a href="http://www.shoup.net/ntl/download.html">
download <tt>WinNTL-xxx.zip</tt></a>.
Here, "<tt>xxx</tt>" is the current version number.
Then <tt>unzip</tt> this file into a directory (folder).
This will unpack everything into a directory called "<tt>WinNTL-xxx</tt>".
Inside this directory, you will find several directories.

<p>

<ul>
<li>

The directory "<tt>doc</tt>" contains all of NTL's documentation,
including this "tour" ("<tt>tour.html</tt>")
and the "<tt>.txt</tt>" files explaining each module,
which can be accessed directly, or through the "tour".

<p>
<li>

The directory "<tt>src</tt>"
contains all of the source files for the library,
all with "<tt>.cpp</tt>" extensions.

<p>
<li>

The directory "<tt>include</tt>" contains a single directory called 
"<tt>NTL</tt>",
and the latter contains all of the "<tt>.h</tt>" files.

</ul>

<p>

<b>
Platform dependent macros.
</b>
<p>

In directory "<tt>include/NTL</tt>" there is a file called 
"<tt>mach_desc.h</tt>",
which contains all of the platform-dependent macro definitions.
The default settings should be correct for any 
system running Windows; however, the correct definitions
can depend on the compiler and run-time environment.
Therefore, to be on the safe side,
you might consider compiling and running the program <tt>MakeDesc</tt>,
whose source files are in directory "<tt>MakeDesc</tt>".
This program will
dynamically build
a correct "<tt>mach_desc.h</tt>" for your platform (processor, compiler, 
run-time environment).
To get accurate results,
you must compile this program using the level of optimization 
(or higher) that you will use for NTL.
The program will print some diagnostics to the screen, 
and create the file "<tt>mach_desc.h</tt>" (in the current
directory, and not in the "<tt>include/NTL</tt>" directory,
where it needs to go).

<p>
<b>
Configuration flags.
</b>
<p>

Also in directory "<tt>include/NTL</tt>" is a file called "<tt>config.h</tt>".
You can edit this file to override some of NTL's default options 
for basic configuration and performance.
Note that the file "<tt>def_config.h</tt>"
contains a backup copy of the original <tt>config.h</tt> file.


<p>
<b>
Test programs.
</b>
<p>

The directory "<tt>tests</tt>" contains several test programs.
For each program <tt>FooTest</tt>, there is a source file
"<tt>FooTest.cpp</tt>", and optionally two files 
"<tt>FooTestIn</tt>" and "<tt>FooTestOut</tt>".
If the latter  exist, then the program should be run with
the "<tt>FooTestIn</tt>" as standard input;
correct output (printed to standard output) should match
the contents of "<tt>FooTestOut</tt>" exactly;
note that these programs also print diagnostic output on the screen
(through standard error output).

<p>
<b>
Timing functions.
</b>
<p>

The directory "<tt>GetTime</tt>" contains several alternative
definitions of the <tt>GetTime()</tt> function.
The file "<tt>GetTime.cpp</tt>" in the "<tt>src</tt>" directory should be OK,
but your compiler might like one of the definitions in
the directory "<tt>GetTime</tt>" better.

<p>
<b>
Other tools.
</b>
<p>

The directory "<tt>misc</tt>" contains a program <tt>newnames.cpp</tt>
to help make the
transition to NTL version 3.5 from earlier versions of NTL.
See the <a href="tour-changes.html">changes</a> section for more details.
It also contains the programs <tt>gen_lip_gmp_aux.cpp</tt>
and <tt>gen_gmp_aux.cpp</tt> that automatically generate
the auxilliary files needed when using NTL with GMP.
You will have to look at the makefile in the Unix distribution
to see how to use these.



<p>
<b>
Compiling NTL.
</b>
<p>

Since there are a number of incompatible compilers and program development
environments available for Windows, no attempt has been made to
provide automatic tools for building and testing,
as is done for the Unix distribution.
Nevertheless,
it should be straightforward to install NTL (even if it involves a bit of
pointing and clicking).
First, compile all of the files in "<tt>src</tt>", and create a static library.
Make sure the compiler knows where to find NTL's include files
(directory "<tt>include</tt>" and <i>not</i> "<tt>include/NTL</tt>")
Then, to compile a program using the library, 
make sure the compiler knows about the library and the directory
of NTL's include files.
In any case, if you want to do any serious computations,
you will certainly  want to compile everything with your
compiler's code optimizer on.

<p>
Here a a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xijP2xATPI&feature=youtu.be">link to a video</a> showing how NTL can be built using a Microsoft compiler.
To me, it looks very complicated: I recommend MinGW or Cygwin.

<p>
Further remarks.
</b>
<p>

<p>
<i>TIP:</i>  When writing programs using NTL, 
you should include files using the syntax
<pre>
   #include &lt;NTL/ZZ.h&gt;
</pre>
and <i>not</i> using a backslash ("<tt>\</tt>") as a delimiter.

<p>
<i>TIP:</i> When writing <i>windows applications</i> using NTL
(as opposed to <i>console applications</i>) you might want to compile 
your program with the <tt>NTL_NO_MIN_MAX</tt> macro defined.
This suppresses  the declaration of several <tt>min</tt>
and <tt>max</tt> functions in file <tt>tools.h</tt> that conflict
with macro names in the MFC header files.
Do not attempt to build the library with this macro defined -- only
programs that use the library.
Another solution is to define the macro <tt>NOMINMAX</tt>, which will
tell the Microsoft compiler to not define min/max macros.



<p>

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